IPRP Busted Group for Making Pirated Copies of School Question Banks to Cram Schools – with Market Value Over TWD100 Million.

With respect to parents’ and students’ concerns over the issues of unfair test results for cram schools having similar examination questions with those of junior and senior high-schools’ and elementary school’s, the Intellectual Property Rights Police team after collecting and reviewing relevant evidences for several months have conducted investigations relating to the concerned issues.

The alleged suspect, Ms. Li (Li), opened cram school over 10 years ago.  Li, once a well-known math teacher, was aware that bookstores offer free examination question banks designated for school teachers’ use and if cram schools can have access to these questions, the chances for students to pass the entrance exam would have been high.  Such high admission rate can be used by cram schools as convincing promotional material to recruit students in the future.  Bookstores only sell question banks at a minimum purchase quantity of 30 sets per order.  Li was fully aware that under normal circumstances, neither parents nor cram schools would spend the needed amount of money for purchasing 30 sets of question banks at once.  Therefore, she bought 30 sets of examination question banks and solicited sales by making pirated copies on these question banks after receiving orders from cram schools and students countrywide.

Li with detailed information regarding the proposition publisher’s examination question banks in hand, tried to promote sales of question banks through newspaper inserts.  Products for sale include question banks used by schoolteachers, CDs containing question banks, school sample test papers, and sample learning papers, etc.  After conducting investigations for over two months, on 22 September 2009 the police special task force team with search warrants initiated raid actions on the premises of both suspected infringers - Li’s and Liu’s rented apartments.  These sites were used for producing pirated CDs and pirated school sample test papers and for storing these counterfeit products.  Li operated her business by distributing pirated copies of examination question banks to cram schools throughout the nation with payment on delivery.  During the school opening period, Li’s sales revenue would normally amount to over several million dollars (NTD), with annual sales revenue of over ten million dollars.

The police seized about over 260 carton boxes at the sites of raid actions, the seized products include the latest examination question banks used by schoolteachers for the first semester of school year 2009.  The market value of pirated products seized is over NTD100 million, which is also the largest case busted by the IPRP team since its establishment with respect to distribution of pirated copies of question banks.  (2009.09)
/DC